Wednesday, 26 October 2011

The Japanese artist Chimei Hamada (b.1917) studied at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts before serving in the army in China during World War II. In 1950 he began a series of etchings, Elegy for a New Conscript, in which he translated his experiences of war into grotesque, satirical and hallucinatory monochrome images, some of which remind me a little of the work of Alfred Kubin or even Goya, although others are something else entirely. There isn't a great deal of his work to be seen online, but there's a few more images here, here, and here.